Melodic figuration as path for improvising

[VKat]

I found this older (but not that old) thread and decided to push it up because it's what I've been thinking about recently.

I immediately recognized the subject of the post and I also could clearly see why a few replying posters were unsure about the OP's question. The problem is in the interpretation and knowledge of the traditional "Classical" ways of playing, composing and... improvising!!! - Yes literally improvising music as it was practiced mostly in the 18-th century.
Actually, from what I've been reading recently I know that the three components I named as "playing, composing and... improvising" were nearly indistinguishable for the musicians that were coming from the cradle of the Western music compositional school - the conservatories of Naples.
After finishing their studies started in early childhood they were such accomplished all-in-one "musicians of the musicians" that they could sit down at the harpsichord and play in whatever style they were asked impromptu. Since many of them were prepared for service as courtier musicians you can imagine they had little chance to fail :-)

You may ask - what's so special about it? A good Jazz musician can do the same. Well - I would say, almost the same as in most of the Jazz music and to be precise - in all Jazz music there are no obligations how to play. You can be as original as you want and if someone considers you "too original" - it's their own problem. Heh-heh, if the majority consider you "too original", you are out of the business :-)

Contrary to that, the 18-th century professionals had many obligation to play exactly how they were taught to play because the music of the early, what is now known as the "Common Practice Period" had so many rules that could not be broken that in order to learn all those rules those professionals had to spend years and years of thorough training in solfeggio, thorough bass (Partimenti in the Italian tradition) and other related subjects.
"Training" - is a key word here, not just learning by trial and error and playing by ear.

So - how is that all related to the original post? The OP mentioned some of the components that would be thoroughly studied by those 18th cnt. professionals. However as far as I know the terminology of "passing, neighbourgh, appoggiatura, suspension" tones could be not exactly the same back then as it's known now in the Traditional Harmony.
For instance, I was surprised to find out that before the discovery of the "fundamental bass" by J.P. Rameau (read "the basis of the harmonic analysis based on the Roman numerals like ii-V-I") those earlier Italian-trained professionals didn't think in terms of the Functional Harmony at all.

Yes - they didn't think (ii-V-I) and they wouldn't understand what we are talking about!!! Can you imagine that? Yet they could create beautiful harmonic sonorities with just about any harmonic device known today! They were trained to apply the harmonic devices without need to know what they are called. That was a composition-improvisation based on the pure voice-leading.
Many contemporary music history specialists studying Baroque say that the notion of the fundamental bass destroyed the beauty of the Harmony as it was known and practiced in the 18-th cnt.

Anyway, many of the same terms could be successfully applied to Jazz improvisation but the rules of application would be sometimes distinctively different.
For instance, the majority (if not all) of the dissonances in that style had to be prepared before resolution. The rules of preparation and resolution were also quite strict and not just "whatever sounds good to me" or, better "whatever sounds "cooooooooooooool", or yeah". :-)

Maybe another technique that could be very useful in terms of comparing that music to Jazz style is "diminution" - that's how basically to "break", for instance two half notes a third apart in a measure into two runs of 16-th and connect them with elegance. Well, maybe not literally like that but you get the idea. That was also considered an art and was one of the subjects of training in the 18th cnt.

Why I decided to comment in such a generalized manner? I feel there is clear distinction between the improvisation as it was practiced in the Common Practice Period (and mostly in the 18-th cnt.) and the way Jazz musicians approach what would seem to be nearly the same activity.
On the surface they are very similar but once you get a little deeper you can see that it's often hard to apply the terminology of the Traditional Harmony of the CPP to Jazz improvisation.
Take just one thing: the seventh of the chord which is considered a dissonance in the TH and has to be resolved ASAP.

So, getting to the very subject - a "figuration" in the Classical terms is a way of decorating the otherwise basic and boring melody based on the slowly moving (mostly) chord tones. Actually that's what is done in Jazz with running the changes based on the chord tones placed on the strong beats and decorated with approach and passing tones. Almost the same - but the rules are different.

I would re-pharse the saying: "There are probably many people who know how to make a bad omelet without the fundamental knowledge of what an egg is". :-)
And the bad omelet is everything including the product of notorious superimposition applied tastelessly.

I'd like to thanks all of you for posting interesting ideas and comments. I was curious about how you guys think about improvisation because I have seen people talking a lot about modes, arpeggios, scales, superimposition of scales and arpeggios and nothing about musical structure. I'm glad all of you agree with the importance of be aware on structural musical elements, because reversing the reasoning of David in the first response:

I sometimes see people talking too much about eggs without knowing how to make an omelet.

Cheers.